Fourth of July in a Hurry

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

If you’re cooking for the Fourth of July, a midweek holiday is not your friend. Who has time to prep on the workday before?

Still, I’m glad that, unlike Memorial Day and Presidents Day, the holiday falls on its true date—and hasn’t been switched irreverently to the closest Monday for the convenience of a three-day weekend.

I’m trying to streamline our Fourth of July menu with simple-to-prepare dishes to accommodate a Tuesday family get-together. Recipes from our Special Fork archives and recipe database will ensure a do-able celebratory lunch. You might like to try some of these recipes, too.

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In Search of the Ultimate Salade Niçoise

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

I didn’t find the ultimate Salade Niçoise in Nice. Actually, despite ordering it four or five times, I didn’t find it anywhere in the South of France, where we vacationed a few weeks ago.

My fault.

I ordered my favorite salad in casual outdoor cafés, where expediency probably gets in the way of authenticity. I love this salad so much that I didn’t mind that their ingredients didn’t match my expectations.

The fact is, there are many opinions regarding what should be in a Salade Niçoise. A robust main dish salad perfect for summer, I’ve always thought it contained potato salad in a vinaigrette, green beans, anchovies, olives, canned tuna, tomatoes and hard-cooked eggs—Julia Child style.

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Food and Travel—What we can Take Away

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

For a food lover, whether you’re doing a road trip to another part of your state or flying to another continent, tasting regional specialties and visiting local markets are highlights of travel.

Steve and I just returned from three weeks in the South of France and Turin, Italy. And in addition to some exceptional dining experiences on the road, including at two restaurants ranked in the top 50 of the World’s Best—we manage to extend the pleasure of our trip by bringing great food home.

When my kids were little and we went to France and the Netherlands for their first European vacation, I brought back a few little jars of jam and hot cocoa packets from our hotel’s continental breakfast and supplemented this stash with local-baked croissants and a baguette, so we could play at being in France. I also bought some “Delft” egg cups to serve soft-boiled eggs, along with cold meats and cheeses, to pretend we were still travelers in Holland.

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Strawberries to Mix and Match

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

Our local farmers’ markets are burgeoning with beautiful, red-ripe and scrumptious strawberries right now. So, I was inspired to bake me a strawberry dessert.

Strawberry Cream Puffs are light clouds of eggy dough, crisp on the outside, with a creamy filling inside, and juicy sliced strawberries sandwiched in between.

While the component parts are not difficult, it’s rather a long recipe for Special Fork, so I’ve divided the dessert into two: you can make each recipe as a stand-alone, or do both recipes, as you see fit.

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Memorial Day Thoughts

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

This Memorial Day, we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States of America. Among them are my uncle who was killed in action in Italy during World War II, and my brother-in-law who died in Vietnam.

This day of remembrance, originally called Decoration Day, began three years after the end of the Civil War, on May 5, 1868. It was designated as a time to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. After World War I, Memorial Day grew into an observation to honor the dead of all American wars.

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